INFOGRAPHIC: The Diabetes Dilemma

Nov 15, 2017

With more than 30 million people in the U.S. living with the condition, diabetes is the #1 costliest traditional therapy class. Express Scripts is working to control costs with high-touch clinical care.

More than 30 million people in the U.S. are living with diabetes, and another 84 million adults – or 1 in 3 – have prediabetes. In addition to being a complex condition on an alarming trajectory, patients are at substantially increased risk for serious comorbid conditions. In fact, 87% of Express Scripts’ members covered under a commercial benefit who have diabetes also have high cholesterol, high blood pressure or both.

Still, diabetes patients struggle to take their medications as prescribed, and nearly 37% of patients on diabetes medication are nonadherent. When compared to adherent patients, nonadherence to oral diabetes medications alone leads to 1.3 times higher medical costs, 1.5 times higher emergency room visit costs and 1.6 times higher inpatient costs.

The Diabetes Care Value ProgramSM is focused on improving your members’ medication adherence and engagement in managing their diabetes. Through a quality-based network of preferred pharmacies or a 90-day supply at the Express Scripts PharmacySM, access to specialized care professionals through the Diabetes Therapeutic Resource CenterSM and unique patient engagement technologies like the Mango Health solution and remote monitoring, we take a personalized approach to combatting nonadherence.

This program is part of Express Scripts SafeGuardRx® suite of solutions, which uses our scale, data insights and patient-care experience to anticipate, prevent and protect against rising healthcare costs.